


a song for every ghost

by rievu



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, piecing yourself together after losing parts of yourself in a war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 17:12:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17329115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rievu/pseuds/rievu
Summary: "The City falls with a heaving sort of grace. It’s to be expected that even that has the Traveler’s grace. Light does that to a thing, makes it whole, gives it radiance, gives it grace. But Guardians do not fall gracefully. Guardians are not falling leaves nor are they gentle rain. They fall in blazes of solar and arc and void energy and leave only splashes of miasma in their wake."// a story of how the city falls and how a fireteam finds each other again in the chaos





	a song for every ghost

The City falls with a heaving sort of grace.

It’s to be expected that even that has the Traveler’s grace. Light does that to a thing, makes it whole, gives it radiance, gives it  _ grace _ .

But Guardians do not fall gracefully. Guardians are not falling leaves nor are they gentle rain. They fall in blazes of solar and arc and void energy and leave only splashes of miasma in their wake. The Cabal patrol the edges of the City. Their steps stomp against the ground, causing echoes of their patrol to resound around the hollow City. Some kick the bodies of Guardians aside. Others mutilate them for entertainment. Dead Ghosts seem to be popular trophies to collect and carry around for the legions of Red troops that file around the City. 

It’s a war. It’s a war that Lyra doesn’t think she’ll win. Without the Light, she sees no possibility of defeating Ghaul. Even with her blazing wings and flaming sword, she wasn’t able to take down Ghaul. Hell, even the Vanguard weren’t able to keep the City from falling. She  _ saw _ Ikora Rey herself disappear in the wreckage of plummeting ships, and Cayde-6 and Zavala were nowhere to be found after she was crushed and flung to the ground to die by Ghaul himself. 

Her fireteam is missing as well, lost somewhere amongst the chaos. 

Asher was the first one lost. After giving one last tight and desperate hug to them both, he stayed behind with his shield, keeping the forces off her back for as long as he could. Raven-16 was the next. She gave Lyra a small salute before she leaped off a ledge and tackled down a Cabal legionnaire with one last flare of arc energy. All for her. All so that she could continue moving forwards and follow the Vanguard’s orders.

The Vanguard are gone. Her fireteam is gone. The Light is gone. She only has a gun and her Ghost left.

It sickens Lyra down to the very bottom of her stomach when she sees the mangled bodies and the crushed Ghost shells. There is no time to stop and help anyone. There wouldn’t be much point to it either. All of the bodies that Lyra finds are too far gone for her to save. They used to record every Ghost and Guardian in the Tower’s Cryptarch Archives in a separate section from the Engrams. There, there would be a legacy left behind for every Guardian, a song for every Ghost, so that history would remember them. Lyra remembers updating her memory card in the Archives every now and then. That adds a new tragedy to the fires consuming the City. All that history lost.

Still, Lyra’s alive and she doesn’t know  _ how. _ Her Ghost, Orion, cannot find a single trace of them. He flits around weakly, aimlessly, and returns back to report, “Raven and Asher are nowhere to be found. I can’t detect their Ghosts anywhere.”

“And you can’t pick up a single signal of Crow and North anywhere? Are they even sending out signals?” Lyra asks urgently. She huddles lower under the fallen slabs of concrete and torn metal rebar as a Cabal patrol passes by.

Orion shakes in the air and waits before he replies, “No, if they were smart — which they are — they wouldn’t be. Cabal could pick them up.”

Lyra blanches before she wonders, “Do you think the Cabal detected you?”

“No,” Orion replies almost proudly. “I’m too good for that.”

“Of course you are,” she ruefully replies. “Why did I even ask?”

Lyra stumbles on her feet and slips on the floor when she can no longer hear the patrol, only to find that streaks of red cover her fingers when she scrabbles to get up. It’s blood from another Guardian, lying limp on the floor with their dead Ghost beside them. Her stomach lurches, but she cannot stop. She cannot stop to record their names, to give them a proper burial, to honor their last moments. She cannot stop until she is out of the City. Orion huddles closer to her and whispers, “Lyra, we have to move. The Light… They’re taking the Light!”

Lyra already knows. The ebb and flow of the Traveler’s gift is already fading beneath her fingertips, but she can still summon one last blaze of the sun in her hands. She’s so close to escaping once and for all, but of course, there’s another patrol. This time, their leader looks larger and more powerful than she’s ever seen in regular patrols before. “I have enough for one last push,” she breathes. “Let’s make it worth their time.”

The Cabal don’t know what hits them until it’s too late. A blade honed from pure dawn blazes before them and sends fire raining down from above. Lyra lands shakily on her feet as her flaming wings dissipate. Orion urges her on as she makes one last run for it outside the City’s limits. She collapses in dry, fragrant grass behind a large outcropping of rock. Her breath comes weakly, struggling to make its way in and out of her lungs properly. It feels like she’s going to die again. 

Truth be told, Lyra already knows what it’s like to die. She’s died so many times in the name of the Traveler that death is no longer the same as it used to be. But now, without the Light, with the knowledge that her next death will be her  _ final _ death, the sensation is terrifying. Her mind is so addled with fear and grief that she can’t really comprehend it properly. Instead, she curls up on the grass and breathes. Orion’s voice filters through her ears, but she can’t quite comprehend it properly. Half of her wonders if it’s even worth trying anymore, but then, she remembers that she  _ must _ make it to the end. Her fireteam is out there somewhere, and she’ll find them. She’ll find them even if it’s the last thing she ever does.   
  


* * *

 

Raven-16 has lived through sixteen different reboots and does not intend to live through a seventeenth. After the seventeenth reboot, she fears that she will never retain enough memories to keep  _ who _ she is. She barely remembers who she was, and only her Ghost, Crow, keeps the audio-logs of the memories that she recorded before past reboots and deaths. Now, she is Raven-16, and she laments and resists. If she shuts down now… No, she cannot even entertain the possibility.

It’s a commonly known fact that reboots can cumulatively erode the internal memory capacity and retention rate of an Exo, and Raven’s gone through  far more than the average Exo. It’s true that Guardians don’t quite fall under the same principle; sometimes, deaths can even leave Guardian Exos with more shards of memories than less. Still, Raven knows that she’s a bit of a special case when it comes to reboots. She was Raven-2 when she first awoke in a desolate land with only her floating Ghost to tell her of her newfound destiny. Since then… It’s been a long and hard journey to cope with fourteen reboots. Some reboots were unfortunate and necessary while others were with her own consent.

Regardless, she will  _ not _ die in the wreckage of a City at the hands of a brutish Cabal foot soldier. If she dies, she will die by her own hands with her own memories and her own willpower still with her.

“If you shut down now, there might not even be a Raven-16 again. No Raven-17, no Raven-16,” Crow confesses. His voice shudders and shakes as small sparks fly from his battered shell. “There’s not enough Light. I barely have enough to keep you healed and functional.”

Raven lifts her arm and jolts a little as sparks fly from her own mangled arm. Crow gratefully nestles down into her torn palm, and she holds him close. It’s an uncharacteristic show of affection but by this point, all of her artificial nerves are so shot that she throws all care to the wind and holds him close. Her closest and longest companion. Her Ghost.

The familiar arc energy that used to run along the outer edges of her body carapace is gone. She stretches out her other hand, trying to reach for the familiar Light, but it’s completely absent. If this was how the rest of the world existed and survived, she’s not sure if she would have made it in the world without being a Guardian. Then again, she doesn’t really remember anymore, so she wouldn’t know either way. 

Crow twists in her grasp and floats up to examine her face when she loosens her fingers. He hums, “Your optics and sensors are still functioning properly. Memory banks are all good. All damages are… Well, it’s bad. But it’s not  _ that _ bad. All repairable.”

“That’s good,” Raven sighs out. Her voice glitches in the middle, and she hacks out a cough, trying to keep her vocal box in its right place. The impact of her last fight must have dislodged it from its usual place in her throat. The wires along it feel functional though. Hopefully, it stays in place. She dims the light emanating from her optics and facial sensors and opts to divert the energy towards her low light sensors instead. Bright lights would only be a giant marker to show the Cabal a weak Guardian for the picking, and she needs to be able to see in the shadows better than she currently does.

Raven swears that she can hear one of her fireteam members’ voice in her head. Lyra. 

_ It’s like having a giant X on your back, you know? I remember some Cryptarch telling me that they used to say things like “X marks the spot” in the Golden Age. Books about exploration and sailing and pirates. Anyways, it’s like yelling really loudly, ‘Hey! Cabal! I’d love to have you come and kill me! Hurrah!’ and you know, that’s kinda bad. Really bad. Super duper bad. You’re not allowed to die. If you die, we can’t go on a joyride on a spare tank anymore. We can’t go sky-diving or any of that wild, fun stuff, you know? Come on, find me and Asher. You can do it. I believe in you. We’ll be waiting for you. _

Raven shakes her head wryly; Lyra never really stopped talking. Almost like Cayde from the Vanguard but less humor and more awkward and well-intentioned rambling. She tries to marshal her body’s energy and parts. Some parts like her busted arm or the torn wires in her side refuse to heed her control, but she grits her jawplate and forces herself up. Her legs are still in relatively good shape compared to the rest of her, so she takes step after step.

She’s on grass now, not the broken rubble and concrete of the City. There are less patrols but she still has to shoot down a couple of Cabal beasts and legionnaires. Nothing quite as bad as the city,  but in her current state, it feels like more work than her body can take.

“Duck!” Crow hisses, and Raven dutifully follows. A bullet whizzes over her head — her peripheral sensors aren’t shot after all — and she rolls out of the way just in time to miss a war beast diving at her. She takes her knife and brutally stabs it in its eye before she raises her pistol to fire a bullet right into the forehead of another legionnaire. A couple more bullets in its head is enough to take it down, and a few more take care of the beasts. She slumps back down on the rough ground and tries to re-evaluate the damage done to her. Is it enough to break her? To reboot her? Crow takes a closer look, scanning her with his blue radar, and with a sigh of relief, he says, “Not too bad. I can reconnect some of the wires like…. This.” A click accompanies his words, and Raven lets out a sigh of relief too. It’s hard to explain; something just  _ feels _ more right in her body now. She flexes her fingers and tests out her joints before she heaves herself back up on her feet.

Step after step after step after step.

The City burns behind her.

 

* * *

 

Asher never wanted to be a Guardian. When North woke him up in the middle of a cold and bitter night, telling him that he was to be “a Guardian filled with the Traveler’s Light,” he turned away from the Ghost on his side and shut his eyes. He didn’t want to be a Guardian. He didn’t want to do much of anything at all. All he really wanted to do was to sink back into another eternal slumber. He could barely remember much from his past life, but what he did remember was an all-consuming, aching grief beyond anything that he could comprehend. That was enough for him. He didn’t want to be  _ here _ anymore.

Eventually, North got him up and shuffling towards a distant dawn. Every time he would stop, North would swerve around and start pushing him from the back. That made Asher laugh a little bit. This little drone trying to push  _ him _ around? Still, North pushed and led him to where he is now: a sentinel standing tall and strong to protect the Traveler and the Light.

Now, Asher feels like he’s reliving those early days, and instead of succeeding in his job — the very job he was brought back to life to do — he’s failing spectacularly. The City is broken, the Traveler is chained, Guardians are dying and dead, and he is lying on his side in a cold and aching night once more. The fires around him already died off into cold ashes, and the Cabal moved on to other areas to burn and comb through. They take dead Ghosts with them as champions, and Asher sees them dangling off belts as the Cabal leave his street. He quietly prays that Raven and Lyra have not fallen under the same fate as the others. 

Somehow, he manages to make his way out of the City and into the open much faster than he expects. Every time he almost gets caught, the Cabal find some other sound or body to investigate. Asher doesn’t know which is worse: getting caught or hearing the Cabal tear open another Guardian and take their Ghost. The sound of crunching bone and screeching metal armor is too much for him to bear sometimes, and he shuts his eyes tightly, willing them to go away. North is silent as well. Both have no words for the horror that’s being done to the City, to the Traveler, to the world.

He only speaks when he reaches the mountains. They loom over the horizon and over him when he finally arrives at their base. Even here, there are bodies of dead Guardians. Not quite as many, but still, he finds shards of broken Ghosts and a body or two slumped on the ground. Even though he’s shaking from exhaustion and hunger, he still takes the time to mouth out a prayer over a dead Ghost or bury a Guardian as much as he can. This mantle of the Light may not have been what he wanted, but he must bear the responsibilities, bear the burden. 

“This isn’t what I wanted,” he says shakily. The words feel strange on his tongue after not speaking for so long, but it’s what he says. The wind whistles and dances in the air, and the aching cold spreads deeper into his bones. 

North nudges closer to him, nestling into the crook of his neck and shoulder. “This isn’t what I wanted either,” he pipes out. “I never thought… I never thought that the Traveler would fall.”

“But here we are,” Asher sighs. He kneels down and starts digging. The granules of soil catch under his fingernails and stain his fingers brown, but he digs a shallow indent deep enough to place several broken shards of Ghosts. One must have had a purple shell before its untimely death because among the usual white and silver, there are several pieces that are a brilliant royal purple. Asher grits his teeth and piles all of them into the indent before burying them with the nearly-frozen dirt. He gets up on shaky feet and looks over to the body. He can’t bury them, not with this frozen ground. 

Instead, he folds his hands and sings a song for them. It’s one that he vaguely remembers from his past life mixed with one Golden Age song that he heard from a Cryptarch once. 

They move on silence, hiking up the rocky mountain path. Asher finds a broken sword on the ground and uses it as a crutch to help him up the cliffs. It reminds him of his teammate — Lyra with her flaming sword pulled from the sun’s light and blazing with just as much heat — and he nearly buckles right then and there with the weight of memory. Still, he moves on. They ascend, further and further, until the air turns thin and snow coats the ground.

“Hey, Asher?” North suddenly says.

Asher takes a moment to catch his breath before he digs the sword into the ground and uses it as a support to haul himself up. After his feet are on safer ground, he pants out, “What is it?”

His Ghost whirls around in the air with a contemplative hum before he says, “Do you think we’ll survive this?” 

Asher knits his brow together and reluctantly says, “As much as I hate to say it, I don’t think so.”

North trills with amusement and says, “Classic Asher, isn’t it?”

North is right; Asher was known for his pessimism. Asher frowns and proceeds to climb upward as he grumbles, “Well, you were the one who asked.”

“I know, I know,” North says before falling into silence again.

The sky fades to twilight as they climb, and North hums motivational songs. Asher doesn’t want to tell him, but he’s slightly off-key. It’s endearing nonetheless, and Asher can’t get the image of broken Ghosts and guardians on the frozen ground. He’s grateful that both he and North are still here.

“Hey, Asher?” 

Asher turns head to see North bob up and down. He’s blinking on and off: a sure sign that he’s in a thoughtful mood. Honestly, Asher’s happier to see North in a thoughtful mood rather than a miserable mood. “What is it?” he repeats just like before.

“I liked being your Ghost,” North says. His digital voice glitches slightly before he floats over to Asher and settles down on his shoulder. “Even if you weren’t what I was expecting when I first found you. I liked being your Ghost.”

Asher pauses on the mountain, and tears prick at the back of his eyes. He remembers those first, stumbling days as a Guardian, waking up in snow and wind with a former life clinging to his skin and a new life staring directly at him. He was sure that he didn’t want to be a Guardian back then. Now, he knows better. He quietly replies, “And I liked being your Guardian.”

North hums. It’s a low thrum that vibrates against his skin, even through his ragged clothes and broken armor. “Would you sing a song for me if I was broken?” he queries, his voice tremulous and still glitching.

“Of course,” Asher says incredulously. “Always. Why would you think I wouldn’t? Besides, I don’t think I would survive long without you.”

“I’m not sure about that either,” North admits. 

Asher pauses to hoist himself up past a particularly jagged block of rock in his path. When he glances up at the now-darkened night sky, he tries to find the North Star. Judging by the distance they’ve covered and the position of the stars, he thinks they’re on the right direction. Not that he really knows which direction is the right one, but north just feels right to him. North the Ghost and north for direction. It made sense to him at the time when he started climbing. He uses the sword for support as he gingerly climbs down the other side of the rock. After he has his balance, he starts trekking up again and asks, “Do you know what happens if you die before me?”

“I think you’d stay alive,” North says thoughtfully. Asher can hear him rotating his shell as he thinks. “You have enough of the Traveler’s Light to keep you alive for a life. I just wouldn’t be there to heal you or revive you. Not that I could right now, but you know.”

“If you go,” Asher says resolutely. “Then I go.”

“Together then,” North says softly or at least, as soft as his voice software allows him to go.

“To the end, North.”

“To the end, Asher.”

 

* * *

 

Lyra’s surprised when she wakes up again. She’s not dead. 

She hauls herself and examines herself. Orion is tucked into her pocket, and the ground around her is scorched and blackened. Bodies lie on the ground far away from her, and she squints at them. They’re just the Cabal she slaughtered before. But otherwise, she’s had the immense luck to not be found or killed. Orion is silent, but when she places her hand in her pocket, she can feel the light thrum radiating through his shell.

That’s good enough for her. 

Her limbs feel relatively okay, but she feels drained. Normally, she feels light on her feet, bright enough with the Traveler’s light to bounce around with infinite leaps and flight. Fire doesn’t race through her veins anymore, but she still has blood. A blessing, she has to remind herself, a blessing. She carefully gets up and scans the area for any other threats. Still, there’s nothing. She can hear the sounds of marching Cabal patrols in the distance, but they’re not close enough to pose a danger. Yet.

Other than the bodies, she finds the melted, charred remains of her favorite gun. Lyra can’t help but let out an annoyed hiss when she tests the gun out. No use; it’s damaged beyond repair. She swears under her breath, and in her pocket, she feels a light thrum of laughter from her Ghost.

“So, you’re finally awake, huh?” she says under her breath as she heaves herself up once more.

“Excuse me, I’ve been awake this entire time,” grumbles Orion from her pocket. “Ghosts don’t sleep. You know this already.”

Lyra bends down to scavenge a gun and some ammo from a Cabal body. She lifts it up experimentally. Not bad. The weight is a little off in her hands, but she can make do. “Then you’ve been awfully quiet for a really long time,” she answers absentmindedly as she runs her fingers down the gun’s barrel. A layer of soot comes off and coats the pads of her fingers. No doubt from her fiery escapade.

“I’ve been thinking,” Orion says with a digital harrumph. 

Lyra lets out a soft chuckle before sliding the ammo cartridge in and holstering the gun. “A penny for a thought then. Is that phrase right?”

“Are you referring to the Golden Age phrase or an actual penny for my thought?” Orion asks. He nudges his way out of his pocket and floats beside Lyra now. “if you want the Golden Age, then it’s actually ‘a penny for your thoughts’ and not just a thought.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Lyra grumbles as she starts striding off in the opposite direction of the patrols. She hopes that it’s the right direction. Silence might be a better sign than the sound of marching footsteps at least. She cocks her head and waits for a moment, listening to her surroundings. Raven and Asher used to make fun of her for getting auditory augmentations just for listening to Golden Age music better, but now, it’s finally useful. Not that it wasn’t before, but now, she’s distinctly more grateful for poor late-night decisions.

Orion starts talking once Lyra starts heading towards her chosen direction. “Okay, you Golden Age obsessed guardian,” he says as she stumbles over broken rubble and concrete. “A penny for a thought, eh? I was thinking, what if we could get the Traveler’s Light back?”

“You’re joking,” Lyra scoffs as she ducks under a bent lamp post. A sharp pain lances through her abdomen as she bends, and she straightens up slowly, trying to assess any damage. She probes with her fingers before judging that it was just a pair of exceptionally bad bruises. It doesn’t feel like severe internal damage yet. Definitely not like the time she almost got eviscerated by Fallen during one mission gone wrong.

Orion lets out a worried thrum, and Lyra waves him off. He blinks indignantly before settling down near Lyra. Silence passes, and the only sound are the ambient sounds of smoldering in the background. Some embers still haven’t died out in the destruction, and Lyra helped the fire live longer through her fiery last stand. Based on the state of the destruction and the embers, she suspects that she wasn’t unconscious for long. Orion floats closer to her and whispers, “No, I’m serious. The Traveler can’t be killed that easily.”

“Even if it was possible to get the Light back, it would be in the hands of the Cabal,” she snorts. “You saw the Cabal. Sure, we managed to beat them off for one last stand, and we managed to survive. But that was with the last bit of my Light. I can’t pull out another sword of sunfire and destroy everything in my path again. That’s not how it works this time.”

“But there has to be a way,” Orion insists. He moves to float in front of her face, blinking obnoxiously fast. “The Traveler can’t be killed that easily.”

Lyra concedes, “You’re right. The Traveler wouldn’t fall that easily, but we’re not the Traveler, Orion. We’ve got our own limitations.”

Orion stops and Lyra crashes into him. She hisses when the metal of his shell smacks solidly into a scratch across her cheek, and Orion lets out a soft apologetic beep. Still, Lyra knows that Orion won’t give up that easily. They’re both stubborn like that. Sure enough, he bobs after her, beeping, “Is this Lyra that I’m talking to?  _ The _ Lyra, the warlock of sheer optimism? The same person who said that everything was a good opportunity in the bottom of a Fallen lair? The same warlock who said that it was a fun trip after being kicked off a cliff by Hive? You’re hurting your own reputation here.”

“I know, I know,” Lyra sighs. It’s all true; she does have a tendency to be overly positive about things. And that Fallen lair  _ was _ a good opportunity because she found a nice gun down there. And the cliff was a fun trip. The view was spectacular for the first five seconds of falling. “I do think it’s possible to survive and make something out of this. It’s just that I don’t think we’ll be able to make it back to the City and make it to the Traveler to get the Light back. You saw the Cabal. You saw Ghaul. He crushed me like I was nothing.”

The memory stings at the back of her mind. She tried to follow Commander Zavala’s orders, saw the legendary Ikora Rey dive after a warship, and made it all the way to the top with the help of her fireteam. And it was all for nothing. She was still tossed aside like a rag doll, diminished to nothing, and left to the nonexistent mercy of the Cabal. Her survival was a miracle at the very least, and it was a blessing paid for by the sacrifices of others less lucky than her. She doesn’t even know if Asher and Raven are still alive, and that thought makes her gut churn with anxiety.

“I believe in us though,” Orion says resolutely. He spins his shell around for emphasis.

Lyra gives him a faint smile and repeats, “I believe in us too.”

They travel in silence, and along the outer limits of the City, they find a pile of bodies, both Guardian and Cabal. Lyra retches, holding her abdomen and trying to keep her composure. Orion is always at her side, murmuring reassuring platitudes in a quiet voice. Lyra sucks in a deep breath before reaching towards the pile. She pulls body after body away from the pile and lays everyone down in neat rows. Only for the guardians and the Ghosts though. The Cabal can rot for all she cares. She kneels and shuts each eye, hoping that each guardian would find more peace in death than they did in their last moments. The next thing is something that Lyra hates herself for, but she rifles through their pockets, hoping to find something more useful. She finds ammo, a better gun than the Cabal one that she stole, and most importantly, she finds a key to a Sparrow. 

Hesitantly, she presses the button on the key, and a soft beep answers the click. It doesn’t sound far away from here, and when she digs through the rubble for it, she finds her prize. The Sparrow isn’t heavily damaged, and it looks like it’s still usable. Lyra sighs heavily with relief as she frees it from the wreckage. She swings her legs over the seat and Orion makes sure to float comfortably close before they zoom off and away from the destroyed City. 

They travel for an indeterminable amount of time. Time was always a human construct anyways, and Lyra doesn’t have much space left in her mind to bring herself to care about it. Out of sheer whimsy, she decides to take a direction in order to follow after a hawk that circles and swoops in the air. The journey simply feels like an eternity, but it’s much easier with the Sparrow than without.

One day, after the sun begins to descend from its zenith, Orion suddenly beeps loudly and does a loop in the air. “Lyra!” he calls out. “Do you see what I see?”

For a moment, Lyra doesn’t understand what he’s talking about, but then, she sees it. There are figures of  _ people _ , not Cabal, not Fallen, not wild animals, but  _ people _ . Their figures rise over the horizon, and above, she sees that same hawk that swoops down to land on the waiting arm of a woman in the distance. “Yes!” Lyra breathes out. “Yes, yes! I see them!”

She forces the Sparrow to go as fast as it can and pulls up to the people with a hopeful smile on her face. Most of the people raise their guns when they hear her approaching, but the woman with the hawk merely turns to face her. She has dark hair and dots that make a angled outline on her face. She simply sizes Lyra up and down, but her gaze lingers on Orion. “Well, well, well,” she muses. “You’ve certainly traveled a long way, Guardian. Suraya Hawthorne. And you are?”

“Lyra. Lyra of the Last City, and this is Orion,” Lyra answers in a breathy sigh of relief. She swings herself off the Sparrow, wincing at how her legs sting in return for staying immobile for so long. 

The hawk on Suraya’s arm lets out a piercing screech as a greeting, and Lyra dips her head in a respectful bow. Suraya walks over to her and claps her back. “Glad to see that you’re still alive, Lyra. Welcome to the European Dead Zone.”

 

* * *

 

Crow plays Raven a few of her memory recordings as she walks. There’s nothing else to accompany her except for the sound of hawks screeching in the air and the wind whistling through the valleys. They might as well make the most of it. 

Although she can barely remember anything from before her untimely shutdown, she does remember a great stone crypt and the sensation of a beating heart of flesh and blood. When she first arrives to the Last City, she meets Cayde-6, the Hunter of the Vanguard and mentions the strange memory to him. He nods and tells her he remembered a time when he was flesh and blood too. Since then, she’s recorded numerous audio-logs of every single memory that she can  remember and her Ghost stores them all. 

She’s died so many times and rebooted so many times. Her deaths do outnumber the amount of reboots she’s had, but it’s still considerable.

When she died for the first time as a Guardian, she woke up and found herself to still be Raven-2. Instead of a blank slate, she woke up with a heaving pain in her side where a Fallen soldier broke her ablative plating and tore through some of her key wires. Light connected her wires enough for her to stand up and pepper in an entire ammo cartridge’s worth of bullets in that creature’s head.

Her first reboot as a Guardian came only when she took a shot in the head for one of the members of her fireteam. The sniper rifle tore through her left optic, smashed her faceplate, and shot through some of her key memory banks. Her Ghost could revive her, but he couldn’t do anything about her damages. They had to take her broken, sparking body back to the City for repairs. There was no other choice but to reboot her. When she woke up, she was Raven-3.

His name was Everen apparently. The one she took the shot for. An Awoken warlock who huddled beside her repair table in one of the City’s towers. His skin was pale blue, and his eyes were brilliant green, and he was the first person that she ever saw as Raven-3. She did not remember him. She did not rejoin that fireteam. Too much pain and guilt for the other two who remembered her and not enough for herself, the one who forgot them in the first place.

Raven cocks her head and tries to remember all the fireteams that she’s been in. Her memory banks remember them all perfectly, but the emotions associated with them are fuzzy at best. The most recent one — Lyra, Asher — are the brightest in her memory, and she feels each emotion about them as acutely as her own body. But the rest? Flickers of memory, happiness, pain, guilt, joy.

“You don’t look so good.”

Raven lifts her head and sparks fly out of one side of her face. She flexes her jaw and winces at the grating noise that comes from her plating. “Look at me, Crow,” she says wearily. “I’m broken.”

“You break yourself a lot,” Crow observes.

That gets a harsh laugh out of Raven as she replies, “I know. It’s a bad habit of mine.”

Crow spins his shell as he contemplates, “You know, we installed that new ablative plating specifically to help you not break as much.”

“Well, I guess my habits are stronger than my plating,” Raven answers.

Sometimes, she wonders if she would be as careless if she was made out of flesh. No metal wires, no ablative plating, only soft flesh and blood and bone instead of metal constructs. However, part of her insists that her soul would still be the same, and her soul had a penchant for leaping into the unknown without a second glance behind. 

“I wish you wouldn’t break so much,” Crow says plaintively. His voice cracks and fizzles, and Raven wonders if his software is alright without the Traveler’s Light.

“Same here,” Raven agrees. “I’m tired of always breaking.” The mechanics in that particular quarter of the City now know her body structure more intuitively than anyone else now. They even had a separate file and cabinet for her now with multiple replacement parts since she came back from missions so frequently with excessive damage. Crow could only do so much with the Light in the field for her mangled body.

“At least we’re still here in the end,” Crow says with a touch of hope. Maybe Lyra and her Ghost, Orion, were rubbing off on him. Raven wouldn’t be surprised about that.

“Is it worth it?” she muses in response. She reaches out a sparking hand to pat Crow.

Crow nestles in closer to her hand as he says, “I think so.”

Raven drops her arm to her side and trudges ahead, trying to ignore the way her inner mechanisms grate against each other. They rattle — too loose, close to the breaking point — and she wills her body to stay together for just a little longer. “I”m not so sure anymore,” she finally admits. “We’re still here. That’s true at least, but reboots make you think differently, I guess.”

“Well, they’re reboots. That’s just what they do to your memory banks,” Crow replies.

Raven shakes her head and sighs, “Humans and Awoken are so lucky then. No memory banks for them to break.” Flesh must be so much easier for light to reknit. Raven isn’t sure about metal, not after all the times she’s broken in the middle of a mission. She won’t die, but some parts had to be soldered and replaced by someone else. It was never like that for Asher or Lyra or Everen or any other person she worked with on a fireteam. Their bodies healed and left behind scars as the only reminder. Raven’s reminder is a soldering iron and a few scraps of leftover metal.

“But you’re still alive,” Crow insists. “You’re still walking.”

“Barely,” Raven cuts in. She almost feels bad for her excessively sharp tone, but the pain that flickers from her broken body is almost too much to bear now.

“You’ll make it, Raven,” Crow assures her. “You’ve made it all the other times.”

That’s right. Crow’s been there for every single reboot during her time as a Guardian. Raven forgets that sometimes. Then again, Raven forgets things frequently, but the one thing she will not forget is Crow and herself. They started this journey together, and she promises herself that they will end this journey together if it comes to an end. 

“Raven,” Crow cries out. He beeps rapidly and repeats, “Hey, Raven!” 

That’s enough to jostle her out of her thoughts, and she asks blankly, “What?”

“Look over there! To the horizon! What do you see?” Crow excitedly says. He floats forward, faster than Raven can walk.

“Is that…” she trails off but tries once more. “Is that?” Then, her voicebox cracks for good, and the only sound that spills from her mouth is crackles and fizzles. Yet, based on what her vision receptors tell her, hope blooms in her soul.

 

* * *

 

Suraya Hawthorne tells Asher that he’s one of the first Guardians to make it out of the City and to her motley group of companions. That doesn’t sit well with him. He’s definitely not the first to get out of the City. He’s merely one of the first to survive the damage and devastation that rippled out from the chaos and the madness of that miserable night.

The moon swings low in the sky as night creeps across the horizon. The Farm is a quiet place for now. The only sounds are the sounds of people murmuring. No one dares to speak too loudly. There’s an underlying fear that the Cabal will come at any second. There are Guardians and regular people here, all tending their sounds and bandaging themselves up. Ghosts hover in the air, close to their Guardians. 

“Hey,” he hears. When Asher cranes his head up, searching for the source of the sound, he sees Suraya Hawthorne coming down the stairs of the barn. “What are you doing here in this tiny corner?” she asks as she leans over the railing.

“Moping,” North answers for him. His Ghost flies up to hover near Suraya and continues, “He’s too worried about the rest of his fireteam. Asher’s always been a sad guy, mopes and broods all the time.”

“I can speak for myself,” Asher says dryly as he hauls himself up. “And it’s reasonable to be worried. Do you see anyone else that’s happy or excited? No, we’re all too busy being worried or grateful and terrified to be alive.”

“Fair point,” Suraya concedes. “But rather than moping, do you want to try going out with me on a scouting party? We’re checking the perimeter of our borders to see if any Cabal or Guardians dragged themselves through.”

Asher looks at his Ghost, and North flickers his lights in an affirmative pattern. “Alright, why not,” Asher sighs. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up too high. He knows the danger of that all too well, and he tries to tamp down the familiar flicker of bright and worthless optimism. No sense in indulging it.

He rides on a nearly broken Sparrow patched together with a soldering iron and duct tape. It sputters loudly beneath him, and as they race along, he thinks that it might break down at any second. The European Dead Zone is not a safe place to be stranded, especially without his Light or any proper weapons. North nestles in the crook between his neck and shoulders rather than flying beside the Sparrow. Asher welcomes the touch; it reassures him that North won’t disappear. 

Suraya stops them at a fork in the road. She glances back and signals the back of the group to take a right. “We’ll take the left,” she calls back. Asher’s in the very back, thanks to his dysfunctional Sparrow. He’s got little choice, so he putters after the group heading to the right. He knows no one here, and they find no one. The night begins to stretch too thinly across the sky, signaling the coming of dawn, so the new scout leader stops them for the night. 

Asher curls up in the ragged sleeping bag that they give him and tries to sleep. His thoughts keep him awake though.  _ What if, what if, what if.  _ Those words circle around in his head like a broken record.

They don’t find anyone. So they shuffle back to the fork in the road with nothing to show for their efforts. North flickers his lights nervously; he must know where Asher’s thoughts are straying by now. But his Ghost doesn’t say anything. Not yet, at least. They ride quietly with only the sputtering of his Sparrow to accompany them. He grips the handlebars as he struggles between hoping and not hoping. 

Across the road, he can see Suraya’s group already. They’re gathered at the fork but with two additional people. Asher thinks it’s only one person at first, but as they get closer, he can spot another figure leaning heavily against another person. Good for Suraya, he supposes. At least she found two more people. Two more voices for the Farm, two more bodies to heal back together in the aftermath of the Cabal. 

His Sparrow draws closer and closer, and now, he can make out more details. Sparks fly from the nearly broken body of an Exo, and the other is human. But their faces make him stop. The Sparrows beside him fly onward, meeting Suraya, but his drones to a stop. Then, with a bang, Asher forces his Sparrow into overdrive. His heart leaps up to what seems like his throat, and he has to choke back a long, sobbing cry that rises up and off his tongue. North lifts up from his shoulder to zoom along beside him, and finally, Asher screams out, “Lyra! Raven!”

His Sparrow makes a harsh, grating sound, but Asher doesn’t care. He pushes it on even faster, pushing it as fast as he possibly can. When he skids to a stop, the Sparrow kicks up a cloud of dust and Asher haphazardly knocks it over in his haste to get back on his feet. Some old wounds on his back, legs, and arms ache with the sudden movement he puts them through, but he stumbles over and falls into Raven and Lyra’s arms. 

“Asher, Asher!” Lyra cries, tears streaming down her cheeks. She reaches out to grip his shoulder with a surprising strength, and her Ghost nudges North happily.

Raven can’t cry, but she opens her mouth and tries to get noises out. Her jaw clicks and then nearly falls off, but Raven’s Ghost pushes up on the metal and shoves it back in place. But her ocular lights flash, over and over, in a pattern that he knows to be happiness. 

Asher simply cries, unable to force words to come out properly, and the broken hope in his mind mends together with a kind of brilliance rivalling the Traveler’s Light.

 

* * *

 

Guardians do not fall gracefully. They are not falling leaves nor are they gentle rain, but they held Light once, luminous and radiant and graceful. And their former sparks of Light flicker before steadily growing brighter. In the aftermath of a broken City and a lost Traveler, they find each other against the odds. And their hope becomes a loud clarion within the chaos and miasma of the war.    
  


**Author's Note:**

> i rly wanted to write smth fun abt my destiny 2 ocs, but uh, somehow i ended up with this instead of the light-hearted fun i originally wanted to write. hope you liked it though and thank you for reading!


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